Originally posted by tluna1
not to derail or diminish this post. i just have to laugh becasue astrobiologists and microbiologist find tiny little microbes in far fetched places
and claim life.. which is cool and interesting that life lives there. However scientists cannot agree that a fetus is a living thing before its born?
Really? Just thought that was ironic.

I thought a fetus is a living thing...but the issue is when it becomes a 'human' thing and when the soul enters it. Neither are scientific matters,
really.
Although I could be wrong, I'm not really well-versed in Western religions or American politics. But can you imagine finding a fetus-shaped fossil
in a meteor??? hahahaha,

Many people assume life started from nothing on only this planet. And from there, all of this life was developed. But what could be happening is that
the universe is infiltrated with microscopic life that travels through like a virus. When it lands on a suitable planet, it develops and multiplies.
From there, it could be pre-programmed to generate into more advanced life, depending on the environment. It's difficult to get your mind around
things we can't confirm beyond speculation at this point, but there could be millions of planets in the universe teeming with life. That doesn't
mean every seeded planet takes the same path. Things develop depending on surroundings. And if you look at the Earth's past, the life forms changed
depending on the environment. You can't really say every organism has particularly evolved into something better, just more appropriate for the
environment. "Living fossils" like the Gingko tree have barely changed in hundreds of millions of years.

Originally posted by InnerPeace2012
The problem with "peer" reviews is that it get's PTB attention. And if you follow the "money", this can be easily written off as just space rocks.
This is basically agenda driven.

Aside from traditional scientific skepticism over any extraordinary claim, what's the agenda? Follow what
"money"? Where? What do you even mean putting "money" in quotes?

I didn't see any particular agenda by those who reviewed the initial claims by McKay that Mars rock ALH84001 might show evidence of life forms, except
to bring other scientific views to the table. I think if someone really found incontrovertible evidence of ET life, like maybe a fossilized skeleton
of a vertebrate for example, even the peer reviewers would be excited about it. Who wouldn't be?

Apologies for the slightly off topic post here but for it's relevance to the thread topic, I would suggest you start off with this informative
thread...here to calrify my initial post.

The idea of being over skeptical about the possibility of this being true, is comprehensible but also has its limits. The repeated effort to discount
potential "evidence" suggesting life elsewhere suggests this otherwise.

The universe hasn't been fully discovered to even remotely disregard the possibility of life elsewhere, even microbial life? Let alone, we and other
life forms here on earth are proof of life in the universe.

The world has gone round and round on ALH84001. It's isotopic profile showed it was from Mars, but we only knew it because previous probes had
sampled rocks and atmosphere. ALH84001 was a find, and as such was not in such pristine shape, even after being in Artic ice for centuries. The
suspected fossil structures of primitive bacteria in it have always been questioned, because it was not pristine and there was earth organic
contamination.

This new meteorite is a different story indeed. It can be positively identified as extraterrestrial because all asteroids and planets have a unique
isotopic profile that can distinguish them from terrestrial rock. The fact that it is a witnessed fall, and pristine pieces are being examined is
fantastic, and if they positively come up with organic material like they say, it is most likely going to be historic. I still hold out for ALH84001
because of all the science that was done on it, and the material they found was deeply embedded. I think life is everywhere!

In October 2011 it was reported that isotopic analysis indicated that the carbonates in ALH 84001 were precipitated at a temperature of 18°C with
water and carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere. The carbonate carbon and oxygen isotope ratios imply deposition of the carbonates from a
gradually evaporating subsurface water body, probably a shallow aquifer meters or tens of meters below the surface.

The ONLY thing surprising here, and I am NO authority on this, is that we are still trying to convince people OR ourselves, in some cases, that there
is life on other planets. HELL there is probably some variant of life on the moon, on meteorites, on Venus, on Neptune etc etc...

Originally posted by charlyv
The fact that it is a witnessed fall, and pristine pieces are being examined ...

Well, actually, it seems to be less clear than that.
I've just spent some time looking at the actual paper on arxiv, and the origin of the
samples is less than clear to me.

Although the paper refers to samples being collected immediately and given for analysis, the fact is that they also say ...

During the days and weeks that followed the initial collection of material in Polonnaruwa by local police officials, large quantities of stone
artifacts were recovered from the rice fields in the vicinity of Aralaganwila and submitted for analysis.

And now they have more than 628 samples to choose from.

For this paper, they only show the results from TWO carefully selected cherry picked samples and demonstrate that they are meteoric in nature.
They do not show at any time any heritage information on the samples to demonstrate that they are specifically from last years meteor, and leave me
wondering if there was any way at all to show that they werent from a different earlier meteor at some time in ancient history.
They dont show it any way at all. They dont even bring up the topic.
I think they should have addressed this.

This is so exciting! We cannot possibly be the only life in the universe, I just wish we could be more certain of finds to prove there is other life
out there. Maybe then people will stop acting like the world revolves around them

Originally posted by Vasa Croe
Very interesting. I wonder what the chances are that this meteorite was ejecta from an older impact of the Earth that finally made it's way back with
fossils that were originally of Earthly origin?

Ohh, so there we go again, Life cannot exist anywhere outside the Earth, it again MUST BE from Earth and just coming back to Earth.. Pfff from too
much close mind becareful not to get concaved up there in the head.

Originally posted by Phage
The "discovery" has been roundly critized as lacking scientific rigor.

You mean criticized by a bunch of nobodies on a forum called ATS?

I won't hold my breath for that, though, it may most likely be correct - more noise for nothing, it could indeed just look like one while not being an
actual biological form of life. Though who says there may not be other forms of life.

Originally posted by shearder
The ONLY thing surprising here, and I am NO authority on this, is that we are still trying to convince people OR ourselves, in some cases, that there
is life on other planets. HELL there is probably some variant of life on the moon, on meteorites, on Venus, on Neptune etc etc...

We just need to get away from the "we are so special" syndrome.

But that would bunch us into one group and everyone may be seen as equals, we can't have that now can we?

Anyway this is too inconclusive just yet for it to be front page on MSM.

I have been a proponent of panspermia and directed panspermia for years. I think it's just a matter of time before it's confirmed and this discovery
is a big step.

The idea that life jump started on a planet has always been silly to me. I think life originates in comets and meteorites or is seeded by an advanced
civilization and life then adapts to the environment it finds itself in.

I just got through reading Regenesis, a great book on synthetic biology. If we can write the human genome on bacteria one day, we would seed the
universe with our DNA. Maybe that has already happened.

Originally posted by Vasa Croe
Very interesting. I wonder what the chances are that this meteorite was ejecta from an older impact of the Earth that finally made it's way back
with fossils that were originally of Earthly origin?

I don't know how valid, but your question is addressed in the article snippet right above your post. (That it was verified non-earthly origin.)

How? How could it ever be more likely for microorganisms to arrive on Earth via a meteorite instead of forming on Earth in the first place? After all,
they'd had to have formed on the extraterrestrial planetoid they'd originated from anyway.

Is life so abundant in the Universe that our planet would be more likely to be struck by a life-containing meteorite first?

I believe the universe is full of life and lifeforms so strange to us we couldn't even imagine... Although I don't have major issues with the
panspermia theory. I believe that life creates it self when in the right enviroment not by microbes viruses etc, traveling through vast distances.
There has to be another form of wave ( energy) that exists everywhere and makes aminoacids and chemical compounds to form structures Dna -like and so
on.... Something like salt, sand or water making shapes when exposed to sound waves.
Anyway I don't know why its so hard for some people to accept the possibility of them being actually fossils. Ok I agree that looking like
fossils doesn't also mean they are, but none can say otherwise without even examine the samples.

No, Sri Lankan researchers from Sri Lankan Medical Research Institute of the Ministry of Health in Colombo discovered the 'curious features'
within the meteorites.

Who then called in Sri Lankan Geologists who agreed there were several 'curious features' worthy of further study, who then prepared and sent
samples to Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe at Buckingham Center for Astrobiology at the University of Buckingham, England.

Professor Wickramasinghe performed an initial microscopic analysis and detected what he saw as diatoms, or microscopic algae.

After publishing his findings, and the resulting and expected firestorm of controversy, THEN the samples were sent to the team at Cardiff,
Wales.

Chandra Wickramasinghe is Sri Lankan. He is by far the most eminent living Sri Lankan scientist, although he is now old and obsessed with
panspermia, an idea originally conceived by him and his mentor, the late Sir Fred Hoyle. Being so eminent (by third world standards), there is not a
single academic in his country who would dare to contradict him when he makes this kind of claim.

The testimony of Sri Lankan biologists and geologists on a matter of this kind is meaningless. They have neither the competence nor the resources
to perform the necessary tests. I am very familiar with Sri Lanka and have many friends there. It is the kind of country where a woman goes to
hospital with a broken elbow and has her arm
amputated.

Chandra Wickramasinghe was a professor at the University of Cardiff until he was sacked a couple of years ago. He now runs his own 'department'
(essentially a pasture for him to grow old in) at Buckingham University.

Chandra Wickramasinghe is also on the editorial board of the Journal of Cosmology, a more-or-less crank publication dedicated to fringe
subjects like panspermia.

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